Mobile Health Tech, a mobile healthcare service provider, has rolled out its first commercial trial of mPro Care at Clarkstown Medical Associates PC in New City, NY.

MPro Care is the first two-way mobile diabetes solution that provides automated reminders and accepts readings using standard mobile phones on all major U.S. service providers. mPro Care was developed to help improve patient medication and treatment compliance for improved health care outcomes and reduced cost of care for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, coronary artery disease and hypertension, asthma and obesity.

"We're very excited about this whole mobile healthcare division, and we've partnered with content providers and complementary platform providers to create this mobile command center platform," said Alan Stern, CMO of Gold Mobile, Clark, NJ. "We're trying to create solutions that can be implemented in multiple locations, from doctors' offices and hospitals to call centers and medical labs.

"This platform provides a rapid notification alert system with lots of capabilities for patients and their families, physicians and local authorities such as appointment confirmations and SMS reminders 24 hours before so you don't have to have a nurse make these phone calls," he said. "This allows them to send and receive text messages from a Web-based console to a cell phone and handle multiple calls simultaneously.

"We created categories that can be customized based on whatever the hospital's needs are."

MHT is the healthcare division of Gold Mobile, a provider of mobile communications programs for businesses and agencies.

MHT builds custom WAP sites for hospitals runs the short code 51684 for emergency SMS alerts.

"We sub-segment the database so you can really target the messages properly," Mr. Stern said. "We're in the process of demonstrating this to a dozen-plus hospitals, and some are about to adopt it, while others are in the early stages."

Mobile devices and wireless technology are revolutionizing the healthcare industry, according to a keynote presentation at the CTIA Wireless 2009: Mobile Life conference (see story).

Gold Mobile provides a carrier-certified mobile platform supported by a suite of mobile software tools, applications and services for mobile enterprise CRM, mobile crisis and corporate communications, mobile marketing, mobile Web, multimedia and custom mobile services.

There are currently over 23 million diabetics in the U.S., about 8 percent of the total population, with approximately 2 million new diabetics diagnosed each year.

Clarkstown Medical Associates, or CMA, a well established internal medicine practice, is offering mPro Care for its diabetes patients, in this trial, to evaluate its effectiveness in helping to manage this hard-to-control disease.

Medication compliance, proper nutrition and exercise are major factors in diabetes management, and mPro Care sends custom-tailored medication reminders, motivational and behavioral trigger messages and condition-reading requests to patients' mobile phones via SMS.

Diabetes patients text back their blood-sugar readings, which are captured and plotted on a patient diary card graph in a secure portal for online access by either patient or physician.

"In today's mobile lifestyle, it has become increasingly difficult for many patients with chronic conditions to be medication- and treatment-compliant," said Dr. Howard Feldfogel, CMA partner and Chief of Medicine at Nyack Hospital. "The mPRO Care system offers potential to help patients improve their compliance and management of diabetes and other chronic conditions."

For the CMA trial, mPro Care was implemented as part of a secure, integrated platform for medical practices in partnership with Max.MD and AnswersMedia.

Max.MD is an exclusive provider of .md domain names which has developed the only secure communications platform across a top level domain.

AnswersMedia is an information content provider featuring HealthTV for online and mobile health videos.

As an integrated healthcare service, medical practices and hospitals can now get an integrated patient health management, communications and education platform that allows patients, physicians, hospitals and labs or other vendors to communicate affordably and securely via encrypted email in compliance with HIPAA regulations.

According to a recent Office of the Inspector General report on HIPAA Security and Electronic Protected Health Information, or ePHI, compliance, both hospitals and medical practices will be audited this year for compliance with HIPAA regulations.

Available today, MHT and Max.MD services have been implemented in major hospitals and in thousands of individual practices nationwide.

The mPro Care platform will have space for banner advertising.

"A pharmaceutical company can sponsor mPro Care to promote a certain drug, or a pharmacy like RiteAid or CVS could sponsor it for a doctor and could send out reminders right before a subscription needs to be refilled, and even send out discount mobile coupons," Mr. Stern said. "This can help pharmacies maintain the loyalty of their customers.

"It's being used from a medical perspective to help patients to become more compliant and take their medication and submit readings to physicians," he said. "It allows doctor to know when their patient is not being compliant.

"In the case of diabetes, education is a big part of treating the disease."